Welcome to the best day of the week for 16-bit computer fans: Samedi de Amiga! No, I'm just messin' with ya, though that isn't to say that almost the entire library of ST-urday so far wasn't also on the ST's more popular rival. Commodore Amiga fans are very much welcome here too: that ST/Amiga hatchet got buried decades ago, along with the two systems in question.
As for weekly happenings, almost all my free time has been taken up by Go! Go! GOTY! since December began. I've managed to add a few important games to what will become my top ten list for this year - and I'm relieved I finally have enough fantastic games on that thing without needing to add Xeodrifter to it to make up the numbers, blergh - but it's all I've been doing besides catching up with GBEast's archived Life is Strange streams.
Wiki-wise, I've completed my journey through 1989's Japan-exclusive library for NEC's PC Engine and will next tackle that system's 1990 output before begrudgingly moving onto the Super Nintendo and its prolific 1995 output. I want to write an article about the cool, weird releases I saw from the PC Engine in that year but I really can't find the time presently. Maybe once all this GOTY business has concluded...?
Rod Land
Yes, yes, the sequel to Penis World. Let's just get that goof out of the way so I'm not tempted to use it later. Rod Land is a single-screen platformer action game first released in the Arcades by Jaleco in 1990 that is not entirely unlike Taito's 1986 banger (popper?) Bubble Bobble - I half suspect that the well-acclaimed home computer port of that particular bubble-'em-up allowed for similar Japanese coin-op conversions to suddenly become an enticing prospect. The home versions, which were also available for Amiga, PC, Amstrad CPC and C64, were developed by the UK company The Sales Curve, which strikes me as a very cynical name to call your video game organization. We haven't encountered them yet in ST-urday, but they also produced the decent-to-middling ST ports of Sega's Shinobi, Taito's The Ninja Warriors and Technos Japan's Double Dragon III: The Rosetta Stone. Compared to those violent Arcade classics, the cutesy Rod Land almost seems like an aberration. But is it really?
Y'see, while Rod Land looks cute, it's also fairly violent too. Not that there's arterial sprays emerging from the victims of the wands of elfin sisters Tam and Rit - this being a two-player game - but the method of eliminating opponents is to get close enough that your wand's power doesn't just stun them but entraps them, and in their captive state the player can slam them against the floor over and over until they expire. Upon death, most enemies leave explosives behind which can then be detonated to take out even more enemies. Jaleco was a lesser star in the constellation of cuteness-first Japanese developers like Nintendo, Konami, Capcom and Taito, but Rod Land was one of their stand-out games that allowed them to stand side-by-side with those giants, however briefly. Definitely a darn sight better than a lot of the junk they foisted onto the NES.
Welcome to Rod Land! Oh hey, it's an Al-mi'raj. I don't think I encountered one of those.There's a damsel in distress, naturally, but the twist is here is that...she's actually the mom of the two main characters! This line of dialogue seems a little too... matter-of-fact?Great, a big tower to climb. I wonder if that giant eagle is in cahoots with Maboots?This is Rodland. It looks more like Parasol Stars than Bubble Bobble, but the principle's the same: run around collecting score items while eliminating enemies and avoiding getting trapped. All you need to do is hit an enemy with the magic wand's power and...Lift and slam them on either side over and over. This also keeps other enemies from sneaking up on you. Breaking it off leaves the enemy briefly stunned, and there's a reason for wanting to keep them alive.I'll go into more detail later, but ideally you want to transform them all into these peach-like enemies before defeating them. How? Well, that's what collecting all the flowers on the ground does.The game's narration is a bit on the practical side, I'll admit.The tower is where we find these creepy bud enemies and my favorites: the sharks. Look at those little shark boots!Now the shark's doing a dance. Dunno what he's happy about: I've eliminated all his little friends.So back to why you'd want to keep enemies alive: collecting all the flowers on a stage begins "extra game". Every living enemy becomes one of those walking peach things, and each drops a letter when they die instead of explosives. Spelling out EXTRA with the letters (I told you it was cribbing from Bubble Bobble) gives you an extra life. Since you only start with two and have no continues, finding more becomes an important consideration. It's the game's core risk/reward factor, as leaving enemies alive as you're running around grabbing these flowers is rarely safe.I somehow managed to avoid it with every screenshot, but there's a second use of the magic wands: the power to create ladders. If the player holds up or down instead of left or right when firing, they'll create a special red ladder that disappears when the power is used again elsewhere. It helps with platforms like the above that aren't linked to the pre-existing yellow ladders, though you can always fall down from above to reach them. Enemies will use the ladders you make too, though.The only way to the top part of this stage is by riding the balloons. Sayonara, green dude!Damn, he figured it out too. Crafty, these creatures.I managed to take a shot of this shark guy mid-slam. Look how angry my character is! It's a vicious game, don't let its dainty looks deceive you.Here's an annoying problem: if you and the enemy are too close to the edge of the screen, you won't be able to grab them. It makes you more vulnerable from enemies sneaking up behind as well. It's best to stay away from the edges of the screen unless you've been backed into a corner, because you need space on either side to slam enemies effectively.Getting hit by an enemy transforms you into a tiny pixie who flies away. What a brutal way to go.It's weird to think that almost every action game, especially Arcade conversions, had a high score screen. It was one of those features you couldn't imagine a game not having. The consoles had the right idea scrapping them for most of their games, though I suspect it was only because it's harder to write your initials with a D-pad.I'll show off the two-player a little. I didn't remember which buttons controlled the second player, so I left her down here with no way to defend herself. She'll be fiiiiine.And to finish, we have the explosion from one of the game's Giant Bombs. Had to squeeze one in somewhere.
Most Arcade games for the Atari ST tended to look like ass once converted by eager but overambitious UK devs, but Rodland preserves the cutesy charm that made the original work. It's not a patch on the original Arcade version - it has significantly more content, among other improvements - but home computer owners took their decent Arcade ports where they could find them, especially as so many of them didn't pass muster. Also, it definitely wasn't very common to see games this Japanese on the Atari ST. Just look at all this adorable fairy anime nonsense!
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